Arkansas parade of executions could end Thursday

A convicted killer who included an apology to the families of his victims in an essay published this month is scheduled to die Thursday in what would be Arkansas's fourth execution in eight days.

Kenneth Williams, 38, was serving a life sentence for murder when he escaped and killed a man while on the run, drawing the death penalty. He wrote in an essay published on the online criminal justice site The Marshall Project that he has been "stabilized and sustained" in what could be his final days because "God has transformed me."

Arkansas had planned to conduct eight executions on four nights over an 11-day span wrapping up Thursday. Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed off on the fast-paced lineup so the state could use its supply of the sedative midazolam, the first of three execution drugs, before it expired.

Amnesty International has expressed outrage, claiming the "conveyor belt of death" shows how out-of-step Arkansas is "when it comes to state-sanctioned killing."

Legal challenges ensued, and four of the condemned men won legal reprieves while the four others did not. Ledel Lee, 51, was executed April 20. The nation's first double execution in 17 years was conducted four days later when Jack Jones, 52, and Marcel Williams, 46, were put to death about three hours apart.

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Kenneth Williams' execution Thursday is not yet a lock. His lawyers will fight until the end for a stay, and Jason McGehee, the man who also faced execution the same night, has already won one.

Williams was 19 in 1998 when he kidnapped a University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff cheerleader and her friend, forced them to withdraw hundreds of dollars from ATM machines, then shot them and left them for dead. One lived, but Dominique Hurd died at a hospital.

Williams received a life sentence, but his life of crime was far from over. He escaped prison in 1999, broke into a nearby home and killed farmer Cecil Boren, 57. He fled to Missouri, where he killed another man in a traffic accident. He was captured, convicted of killing Boren and sentenced to die.

Unlike Lee, who claimed innocence until the end, Williams admitted to his murders.

"To the families of my victims, to whom I have brought pain, great loss and suffering, as shallow as 'I am sorry for robbing you of your loved one' can sound, I would rather say it, and mean it, than not say it at all," Williams wrote in his essay My Execution, 20 Days Away. The essay was derived from his written correspondence with author Deborah Robinson.

Williams wrote about the day he was issued the death warrant, and how other inmates asked him to leave them his watch and shoes. He also said he understood why some condemned inmates have little interest in petitioning for clemency, figuring "they’d save themselves the disappointment" of being rejected.

"I, on the other hand, saw opportunity," he wrote. "I wanted to appear before the board so I could show them I was no longer the person I once was. God has transformed me, and even the worst of us can be reformed and renewed. Revealing these truths meant more to me then being granted clemency. ... That's my victory."

Boren's family says the time has come for Williams to pay for his crimes with his life.

"We've been waiting a long, long time for this. He did a wrong," Boren's wife, Genie told KARK-TV in Little Rock. "His jury of peers gave him a death sentence. People have to be punished for the things they've done."